FrameFlow Newsletter - July 2021

Keep Up to Date on the Latest FrameFlow News

FrameFlow v2021.9 Beta Available

In FrameFlow v2021.9, we aim to augment our support for hybrid environments in many significant ways. This update will include heightened support for Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, PagerDuty, VMware ESX, and more.

Also in this update are changes to network diagrams and new Dashboards features we've hinted at in our last newsletter. Our change log will be updated to list every major and minor update when the live version of FrameFlow v2021.9 drops.

One such change to the Dashboards section is the Device Drill Down feature. It enables you to take a top-down approach when it comes to viewing alerts. As exemplified in the image below, you can "drill down" from the top level of your device groups all the way to a singular device.

If you want to try out these features, a prerelease is available in our customer portal. Don't be afraid to send feedback on this prerelease so we can incorporate it in the official release.

If you have trouble with this version of FrameFlow please note that you can safely downgrade your instance to any previous version.

Windows Update KB5003638 Problems

Around the time that we released FrameFlow v2021.8, Microsoft released an update called KB5003638. This Windows update affected multiple types of Windows event log monitoring, including System Restart Event Monitors.

Customers who are experiencing this problem are encouraged to check that both the machine that runs FrameFlow and the device you're trying to monitor have the KB5003638 update installed. This issue only occurs when either the FrameFlow box or the network device you're trying to monitor haven't been brought up to the same patch level.

If you don't initially see the KB5003638 patch, note that it may have been applied as a singular update, or as part of a cumulative update.

New Tutorial: Oracle Event Monitor

Another recent addition to our library of tutorials is the Oracle Event Monitor. It checks your Oracle database servers for availability and runs SQL queries that check the results for specific values.

Our tutorial teaches you how to configure an Oracle Event Monitor and use it to glean information about your Oracle databases. Information found by this event monitor can be displayed in a table in the event monitor's results each time it runs.

You can tailor the display of this information in whatever way fits your purposes.

Read more here!

New Tutorial: Calculation Event Monitor

The Calculation Event Monitor collects graph data points and makes calculations based on them. This allows you to make generalizations about the data gathered by your other event monitors at a glance.

This is one of our most customizable event monitors. You can use it to gather intel on almost any aspect of how your network is flowing. All you need are a few data points and a Calculation Event Monitor to create beautiful charts and graphs that contain exactly the necessary information.

This event monitor can run calculations on just about anything. Imagine that you have 50 wireless access points controlling the WiFi on a college campus. At any given time, it's normal for one or two of these points to be down. Instead of receiving alerts based on individual outages, you could use the Calculation Event Monitor to alert you based on a percentage of wireless access points that are down.

This way, you won't get inundated with alerts about the small stuff, but when it becomes a cumulative problem, you can take action.

Read more about this event monitor and view another potential use case here.

Current Release: v2021.8

Version 2021.8 is the current release and is recommended for all FrameFlow users. See our change log for complete details about what's new and improved.

We expect the official release of FrameFlow v2021.9 to be available towards the end of this month. Complete notes on what's new will be in the change log once the update drops. Make sure to update your instance soon thereafter to continue to receive FrameFlow's latest tools and functions.

Wrap Up

That's all for this newsletter. Thank you to all our users who submitted bug reports that we've addressed in version 2021.8. We value your questions and feedback, so don't hesitate to get in touch.

Sincerely,

The FrameFlow Team

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